The companies’ name, “The Harvard Companies, Inc.,” stands for leadership, excellence, and results and was inspired by Randall’s late mentor and great-grandfather, G. Clifford Noble, who graduated from Harvard along with Randall’s great uncle, who helped founded the Harvard Business School in 1908.

Clifford Noble later founded, with a partner, William Barnes, the largest bookstores in New York City, Barnes and Noble Book Stores. Randall’s great-grandfather was a dreamer, a visionary, a risk-taker, and an individual who, from childhood, could recognize opportunities in the most remote places and transform them into a highly profitable activity.

Clifford Noble was a man of impeccable integrity with an enduring commitment to his Christian faith, family, and community. His legacy lives on through the Turner family. Randall’s mother, the Honorable Betty Noble Turner (former Mayor of Corpus Christi, Texas) has written and published a book on his life, “The Noble Legacy.”

“Let every person be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of this life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of Him (Proverbs 2, 3). Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein.”
– Harvard Student Guidelines, 1636 AD